As a volunteer high school football coach years ago, Greg Berge began noticing a pattern with a particular player.

“We had a running back who was always late getting into his stance,” Berge said. “It bothered me all season, but I never said a word to anyone.”

Months later, in a critical moment, the player was late getting into his stance. He was called for a costly penalty, and their team was subsequently eliminated from the playoffs.

“That moment really defined a tenant of mine,” Berge said. “The little things matter. The details matter. You are what you emphasize.”

Berge is now a high school principal, basketball coach and speaker, and has penned four leadership books.

The Daily Coach spoke to him about his three components of culture, the six factors that can derail a team, and why people pleasing isn’t a long-term leadership strategy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg, thank you for doing this. Tell us about your childhood and how it shaped you.

I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis. My dad was an electrical engineer. My mom was an office assistant. I played golf, baseball, football, basketball and tennis. I loved everything about sports.

I went to (Winona State University) thinking I wanted to get into business. I took a year of (general education) classes and a couple of business classes, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Before my sophomore year, my high school football coach asked if I wanted to help out in August during two-a-days in the first couple of weeks. He actually let me coach and call our offense on our sophomore team. I was hook, line and sinkered from that point on. I just said this is me. This is what I want to do.

What’d you learn in your early coaching years that you still apply?

I became a head basketball coach at just 26, and I replaced a Hall-of-Fame legend in Lake City, Minn., who won three state championships and over 500 games. They were big shoes to fill.

As a young coach, I had 10 different principles of defense. I taught all 10. The kids maybe took in what they needed, so I learned to simplify. Every year I coach, we do less and less and have had more success. Less is often more. If you emphasize it, it will become important to them, and I use this example.

If I were passionate about rebounding and it was the No. 1 thing we wanted to focus on, I could talk about it every day and measure it in games. We could do that and never do a drill in practice, and we could still be a good rebounding team. Obviously, we would drill it, but what we emphasize is so critical. That will become important to them.

Can you share the three factors you believe determine culture?

Culture is such an overused word, and so many think it’s Kumbaya, sit in a circle, make everyone feel good. I think our job as teachers is to simplify the complex. To me, culture is:

1. What we allow
2. What we emphasize
3. Every day

What we allow defines our team and our program. Do we allow kids to not work 100 percent? Do we allow them to show up late? Do we allow them to talk bad to their teammates? Every time we allow something, we have to ask, “How will this impact our culture?”

That “what we allow” aspect can get a little murky for leaders at teams. Do you ever find yourself having to make exceptions to rules?

I’m a big believer that every player is an individual. I’m not a big black-or-white rule guy. I’m not, “This is it, and everyone must follow it.” You have to work with people, but you have concepts… on what you allow.

About six or seven years ago, we had a really good season going. We were in the section tournament. I walk out of the locker room before pregame and saw we were missing some players. I turned the corner, and our five starters were in their own little huddle. It irked me. It bothered me. But it was right before a game, we’d been playing well, so I let it go.

We went out. We won the game… But that was bothering me the whole tournament. When the season ended, I brought in our captains and the kids coming back and I said, “I don’t know what that was, but that’s not happening again. To me, what it looked like was you five separating yourselves from the team. That’s not what we’re about.” I addressed it. It never happened again.

That’s a culture thing I didn’t address that could’ve hurt our team, maybe did hurt our team, but I didn’t allow it moving forward. I made a mistake in the moment.

Culture is like an aquarium. If you don’t clean it every day and keep it up, it’s going to get murky and dirty, and before you know it, you will have a real nasty aquarium that you need to re-clean. Our goal is to keep it as clean as possible.

Can you share your list of the six Ds that you feel destroy culture?

1. Doubt- When kids lack confidence or they hesitate in what they believe, that’s going to hurt your team and your culture. Our job as coaches is to build confidence.

2. Distrust- Can I trust you? Can we trust you? If your players can’t be trusted or a coach can’t be trusted, it will hurt culture.

3. Delay- Being late, procrastinating, not following through.

4. Disbelief- It’s, again, self-confidence. They need us to believe in them.

5. Defensiveness- This is not being coachable, not accepting feedback. If you get defensive when someone is trying to make you better or always have a comeback, that’s going to eat away at a culture.

6. Distraction- I think it’s the most challenging in today’s world. Kids have so many people on the outside talking to them. Half the time as coaches, we don’t even know what’s going on. We don’t know the social media impact that might be happening. That’s hard to deal with in today’s world.

You mention defensiveness. How do you work with someone who doesn’t take feedback well?

I’ve had kids where when you tell them something, there’s automatically a comeback. I’ll say, “Joe, every time I try to give you feedback, you always have a comeback. That’s not what being coachable is about.”

You don’t have to accept everything. You can filter some things out. I think good players take it all in and filter out what’s important, but you can learn from everything.

I think you have to address it head on, let them know exactly what you see, talk about what being coachable is. Hopefully, over time, that resonates. But being honest in those situations is so important. Coaches are really among the last truth tellers for kids in today’s world. Kids hear so much positive, which is good, but they need to hear the reality of what they can get better at, too.

You have some interesting thoughts on people pleasing. Why do you think that’s problematic?

I think coaches, especially younger coaches, worry too much about making people happy, whether it’s players, parents, or admin. That always will backfire on you.

I write about something called the 20-40-60 rule. In our 20s, we worry what other people will think. In our 40s, often times you don’t care what other people think. I’m not 60, but as you get older, you realize people weren’t thinking about you to begin with. The sooner we go through that as coaches, the better.

I talk about it a lot with parents. “Accept the struggle of team sports.” It’s inevitable when you get a group of 15 or so people together and all of their parents, there are going to be struggles with roles, and playing time, and confidence. You name — it’s part of it. You have to accept that and the life lessons that go with it.

Q&A Resources
Greg Berge ― Website | X | Books | Newsletter: Great Teams - Better Leaders | Leadership Resources | LinkedIn

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